Better Accommodations
by Shiro
Summary: It's ten years later, and their rivalry has gotten a little more civil.  Written 5/2/10.


**Better Accommodations**

He visited the Vindice's prison, once.

It was a silent, desolate place filled with rows upon rows of convicts suspended in glass tubes - Rokudo Mukuro among them. It was as amazing as it was disturbing to see his thin body, ankles and wrists shackled with heavy chains, both of his eyes sealed shut. Bubbles intermittently rose from the oxygen mask covering nose and mouth, the occasional swaying of long dark hair the only real movement in that liquid prison. He'd wondered, idly, when Mukuro's hair had gotten so long - and almost immediately decided it hardly mattered.

He didn't touch the glass, simply stood a distance away with his arms crossed as if he expected the floating form to dissipate into mist and reveal the real, flesh-and-blood Rokudo Mukuro. But the Vindice prison wasn't an illusion, and neither was the body in front of him, so he'd left with a sense of irritation and decided he wouldn't visit again.

Mukuro appeared that night, long hair pulled back with a silver clasp and eyes bright and clear. He wore a suit, though one that didn't quite conform to those of the other guardians, and short leather gloves that hid his hands. He seated himself on the couch as if it were perfectly normal and entertained himself reading a discarded newspaper while the man at the desk worked.

"Fix your tie." He only gave the visitor a perfunctory glance between shuffling papers and didn't bother to check if the command had been obeyed; he already knew it wouldn't be.

When he looked up again, the illusionist was lying across the couch - feet propped up on one arm and head rested against the other, face hidden behind an opened newspaper.

"I rarely have visitors, you know," he said calmly, not looking over the top of his reading material but aware he finally had Hibari's attention nonetheless.

"Find better accommodations," Hibari answered dryly, and his visitor laughed.

"Kuhaha-! I see you've gained a sense of humor of late!"

A sound akin to a snort came from the man behind the desk, and the room returned to an oddly tolerant, almost peaceful, silence.

Mukuro folded the newspaper into a smaller square, crossing one leg over the other as he produced a pen from his jacket and filled the daily crossword with wrong answers. Hibari skimmed, shuffled, and filed reports, occasionally glancing at the illusionist from the corner of his eye. The image of the confined, floating form was still fresh in his mind.

"...You're an idiot herbivore," he said, once the silence had grown stifling enough, "letting yourself be caught like that."

The newspaper dropped to rest in Mukuro's lap, pen clipped to the top of the page. He regarded Hibari with mismatched eyes and a perfectly amiable smile that belied his hatred of confinement. Hibari ignored all of it, turning his attention to the computer on his desk even as he continued speaking.

"It's pointless to fight you like this." His voice was a mixture of boredom and irritation. The underlying indication that good fights had been hard to come by recently, leaving him with little more than deskwork to occupy his time.

"Oya? I don't seem to recall you having any complaints before," Mukuro mused, rubbing gloved fingers along the newsprint until the ink began to smudge.

Hibari didn't turn his attention away from the computer screen, even when his visitor swung long legs over the side of the couch, dropped the newspaper on the floor, and approached. Mukuro reached over, picking up a stack of files neatly stacked on one side of the desk, and shuffled through them. Newsprint ink smeared wherever his fingers touched. A hand lashed out, snatching the files back,and Hibari glared.

"Stop trying to provoke me, Rokudo Mukuro."

"Kufufu~ I hardly even have to try."

Files stashed safely in a locked drawer out of Mukuro's reach, Hibari regarded the illusionist with a critical eye.

His lips slowly curved into an almost feral smirk.

"Get out of your tank, and you can try all you'd like."

A mixture of surprise, amusement and a fleeting sort of irritation flashed in rapid succession across Mukuro's features. Then he laughed, loudly, as a thick mist coalesced around his body.

"Be prepared, then. Hibari Kyouya," he said, voice lingering just a little longer than his person.

Hibari brought up a new file on his screen. "If you disappoint, I'll bite you to death."

Even with the illusionist gone, he could have sworn he heard laughter fading into the distance.


End file.
